Gilmore brings Senate campaign to Culpeper

By Allison Brophy Champion

Published: July 29, 2008

Former Governor Jim Gilmore ends his three-day, 14-stop “Working Families Tour” Wednesday in Culpeper with a 6 p.m. appearance at Pepper’s Grill on Madison Road.

Now Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Sen. John Warner, Gilmore, 58, has crisscrossed the state in recent days delivering a campaign message of lower gas prices and lower taxes.

Gilmore, a Richmond native, believes drilling for oil in Alaska and off America’s coasts would provide instant relief at the pump.

“Drill now — you got to drill in the United States and that’s going to mean lower prices,” he said in a recent news conference broadcast online at YouTube.

“That will drop oil prices immediately.”

To a reporter who claimed federal reports say drilling in the U.S. won’t make a difference in prices until 2030, Gilmore said, “Baloney. I don’t care what the federal government says.”

Monday in Charlottesville in a radio interview with WINA, Gilmore, governor from 1998 to 2002, reiterated this message.

“We want to talk to people who actually work for a living and are suffering from these gas prices,” he said. “People are under a lot of stress right now and they want action from the U.S. senate.”

Now is the time for change, Gilmore said.

“For 30 years now, people have been running the Congress that have not had working families at heart. We have got to have more domestic oil production,” he said, also naming increased coal production, nuclear energy, renewable energy and conservation as solutions to the energy crisis.

If the U.S. can say it has a strong energy policy, “That will drop prices immediately,” Gilmore told WINA. “It will help working people right now.”

A University of Virginia alumni and the state’s former Attorney General, Gilmore grew up in Richmond the son of a supermarket meat cutter and church secretary, according to his campaign Web site.

He briefly ran for president last year. Gilmore stopped by the Star-Exponent in August of 2007, five weeks after dropping out of the presidential race.

At that time, Gilmore hadn’t made up his mind about running for Senate because Sen. John Warner had not yet decided to not seek another term.

Gilmore, however, did talk about the possibility of running against former Gov. Mark Warner, a Democrat, if the opportunity arose — a year later, it has.

“I certainly do not seek a race against Gov. Warner, but I would run one if it was in the best interests of the state,” Gilmore told the Star-Exponent last year.

“And I would be pleased to match my record as governor against his any time. But it really is not a matter of a horse race between Mark Warner and Jim Gilmore. I think the right thing to do is to address what’s right for the state and what’s right for the nation. I think it would be a very spirited race.”

Allison Brophy Champion can be reached at 825-0771 ext. 101 or

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Former Governor Jim Gilmore, a Republican seeking Virginia’s U.S. Senate seat, stops by Pepper’s Grill on Madison Road Wednesday at 6 p.m.